Me: The Doctor ages actors when they play
him, but fair play, that was quicker than I was expecting - he looked like a Skeksis with a perm.Someone woke Murray “Itsame” Gold up after the
regeneration and I could hardly hear a thing the Doctor was saying.

0. The footnotes.
Rather than keep this coherent, I’m going to split it up into segments
according to the chat the Him and I had earlier on. Is that alright? Great.

1. My first thoughts were slightly
confused. Not because I hadn’t followed
the plot, chums. Nope, I couldn’t
understand most of what the Doctor was saying when he was playing Peter
Capaldi.2 As tantalising introductions to new Doctors
go, this is the weakest of the new series so/by far.3

2. So, thank whatever’s up there that this
wasn’t the real Doctor playing
Capaldi introduction. We either had that
last month or back in August, take yer pick.

6. And, when the Doctor starts yelling about how
he doesn’t listen to “RUUUUUUUULES!” (shortly before showering gold all over Daleks)7 did anyone else comment on how much
of a pain he’d be to play at Monopoly?

7. This is not.
The time.

8. As did Radio Free Skaro. Victoria Coren’s Dad
wrote some books about Arthur9 that
I devoured whilst munching my way through a library. They were fantastic. For a time there, he also edited the British
satirical magazine that isn’t (the) Private
Eye.9

9. Not that
one.

10. That poor actor. It can’t be easy being a glorified Sea
Monkey.11

11. Instant Prized Family Member/Peripheral
Emotional Hook: just add 2ltrs of water and leave in direct sunlight after
initial read-through. Stir once a day.

12. Since 2005, I’ve had to watch every Doctor Who story twice in order to shake
off the “I used to work/live/perform/was born there” disbelief suspension-snapping
recognition.

14.Michael Kilgariff played the Garthim Master. He
also wrote my favourite-ever joke books.
If only he had some Doctor
Who connection that I could tenderly slide into…

15. Steven Moffat’s not writing fairy tales
any more than he’s writing science-fiction or fantasy or Gatiss was writing biography. Those are genre labels
and like the designation of ‘genius’, you need someone else to announce that’s what
you’re emitting. It's partly because
critics add their wide-spanning interpretation to a work that the cataloging,
or designation, sticks. I’m with Public
Enemy on this one. Well, up until
someone notices that I’m being critical.16

16. Personally, I think I’m dancing (like a
gorilla) around the architecture.

17. I rediscovered Doctor Who the day that I watched The Ark in Space with the Him.
For a moment I had the opportunity to observe through borrowed
eyes. No baggage.

Steven Moffat’s run has been… problematical. I haven’t changed our psychogeological assessment of it for several reasons, the main ones being distance and
trust. In some ways I feel like a
Wein/Wrightson Swamp Thing fan being
confronted with the Moore/Bissette/Totleben version.18

It’s frightening to think that Doctor Who isn’t even being made for Him now.

18. This analogy doesn’t really work because
Moffat is in a different league.19

19.
Unfortunately.7

20.Another hemi-semi-demi-bluff. Matt Smith as played by the Doctor had his
final words leaked millions of years ago, so it was a half-surprise to find
that Matt Smith was wearing Capaldi’s shoes.
Steven Moffat has to be careful.21 M. Night. Shyamalan’s shown us how this
trajectory works. You have to come up with new tricks or
you’re dealing with the old familiarity/contempt/arse/elbow interface.

22. Jenna Coleman and Matt Smith were fantastic
in this. And that’s... part of the problem.7

23. It’s not impossible that we’re seeing the
most incredible run of television ever here.
Moffat HAS to WIN. Always. He’s won more awards for Doctor
Who scripts than anyone else, raised the series profile worldwide, broken America
and… Well. 7

Monday, 2 December 2013

Me:My re-read’s been less successful than
yours.I’m only up to issue 27 at the
moment.I wanted to wait until we had
them all before launching in.

Him: I’ve done fairly well with the
re-reading.In fact, I’ve read twice as
many as you now.

Me:Ah.And you read them all when they were still warm.

Him:Yeah, I read them weekly as well.Except for the first…Something.

Me:We had a bit of a problem starting off,
because I couldn’t find it anywhere1
– so I think we were on issue… 6 before we managed to get you a subscription.

Him: How did you get them before that?

Me: We didn’t.Years ago, the Guardian ran an extra section called The Comic, which was excellent and you loved, so naturally it got
cancelled in favour of…I don’t know,
something about cooking shoes or how to wear yoghurt.

The Him makes a face.

Him:I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Me: Trust me, it’s all true.Apart from the bits that aren’t.Anyway, some of the strips that’d been in The Comic3 – along with their creators – cropped up in something called The DFC, which was a marvellous
magazine that Philip Pullman was championing.It sounded fantastic, perfect and wonderful by all accounts.Exactly the-

Him:‘The Doughnut-Frying Competition’?

Me:I’m fairly sure that’s what it stood
for.Whatever, it was exactly the sort
of thing that I’d been looking for, for you.A comic.

Him:Like the ones you had as a kid?

Me:Exactly!It’s something that’s lacking in childhood now – which is a
reprehensible cultural disaster.All the
comics that are around – well, most of them – just come as free attachments to
expensive stationary sets, or stickers or some sort of franchise-expanding
merchandise.They’re all…Well, I’m being a bit sweeping.They look great, but they aren’t made with
any more love than any other franchised product.Not really.In my opinion.4

Him:You don’t really get modern comics.There just aren’t any.

Me:You’re not into superheroes.

Him:That’s true.But then again, neither are you any more.

Me: No.That got away from me a bit.I
can’t get you into ancient 2000AD
either.

Him:That’s ‘cause I’m just not interested.

Me: Why would
you be?That’s my childhood, not yours.Some of those things’ll grab you, but most of them won’t fill the same
gap for you that they did for me.

Me: Well, we missed the first two issues although
you got a bulky chunk of – I think – 3 to 7 in one go.

Him:I think it was 3 to 8.

Me: That sounds about right.

Him:And then we continued to get them weekly.

Me: Up until the subscription ran out in the
early-70s and you missed a couple.Hang
on – it-

Him:I’ve got them all now.

Me: Yeah, I’m glad.The
Phoenix set itself a high-quality standard from the outset and stuck to
it.It’s a hugely impressive, brave,
beautiful and positive comic – I’m glad it exists.It should be compulsory for every school in
the country to have a copy.

Him:Schools don’t tend to go for that sort of
thing, which is probably why there are less comics nowadays.

Me: I think telly has to accept a certain share of
the blame, along with other distractions.Schools never understood comics though – well, not in Britain.They always seemed to feel massively
threatened by them.

Him:By comics?I can’t think of any real reason why they should be threatened.

Me:Fear of the unknown.And vampires.Well, that’s what it used to be.My English teachers would – largely, not all of them – discourage me
reading trash like Watchmen.I’d be arguing that it was literature and
they would trot out dusty old worthies that I should have been reading
instead.Never ‘as well as’ – it was
always instead of.I should’ve pointed
out that Dickens used to be populist before he was literature…Nah, that’s a bit unfair.I had a couple of teachers who still read
comics.I ended up reading a lot of
Robert Graves and-I’ve done it again,
haven’t I?4

Me:Oh!That’s…Um…That’s really hard.I like Star
Cat and Bunny Vs Monkey…I love CorpseTalk.Corpse Talk, I think.It’s
all excellent though.There’re so many
different styles of story and artwork that you can’t really choose a
favourite.Planet of the Shapes is lovely.And I’d like a collected volume of everything featuring the Art Monkey. Everything.

Me: It was a bit of a disaster on the whole.Still, nice to see Jackie Lane.The Culture Show special was the other end of
the entertainment spectrum from the Aftershow party, but you haven’t seen
that.

Him:It was beautiful.Can I leave now?

Me:Soon.
There was a lot that I didn't just agree with, but feel like I've been banging on about for ages. Those moments left me feeling a bit vindicated. "Yes! That's exactly right!" That sort of thing. Overall, it was great. It looked beautiful and managed to carve some new marks into ground that's been trodden into a quagmire over the last half-century. I tweeted about how I thought the Culture Show special was superb, and
then we got a reply from Matthew Sweet, the presenter.This delighted me so much that I panicked off
Twitter, and sat blushing in a corner for the rest of the evening.

Him:Maybe he’s just a nice guy and replies to
everyone.

Me: Shush.I’m special.Ummm… I think that’s
probably about it.You haven’t seen or
heard anything about the Christmas special have you?

Him:No.

Me:Right, well we’ll wrap up and I’ll go and
write the things that I should have been writing earlier on in the week.And then I can get back to reading comics and books about comics as 'research'.

Him:Ok.

Me:I’ve got some plans for next year.

Him:I have no idea.

Me:Well, when the dust’s settled with the
missing episode rumours we can remount the Ascent, but there’re also a couple
of other things I’d like to have a shot at.

Him:It’ll never end!

Me:We’ve got all the stories watched up to The Space Pirates1 – I just need to type up what we said.

The Him grows an arm
out of his back.

Me:And then…If any of the stories we watched as recons are returned, then I can just
recon the write-ups2 and we can do a
proper entry for the story itself.

The Him drags himself
up the wall with his new arm.Wings
begin to sprout.

Me:Otherwise, there’s the thing about British horror
comics that I’ve been trying to write.The Doctor got jealous at being
ignored and kept flinging stuff at me to make sure I was paying attention, so it's been waiting patiently for the last month and a bit.I’d like to get back to that in
2014.

Him:Would you?

The Him’s jaw distends
by about six feet as his eyes start to glow a virulent blue.

Me:Yeah.And I want us to meet Tom Baker.

Bones crack - tendons scream - a terrible metamorphosis concludes.

Somehow.

The Him emits a piercing
shriek and launches through the window, flapping deftly into the cold November
darkness.Distant screams blow in on the
frigid air.

Me:Born in a barn?

Pause.

Can I type you saying ‘squawk’?

Him:No.No
you can’t.

Me:Fair enough.Lovely.G’night.

1.And we’ve watched every (available) story
that isn’t The Ambassadors of Death –
most of them before we started this blog – in case I hadn’t mentioned that at
some point.

2.Our recon of The Web of Fear can be found in the Travers Tales set here.Go and
have a look, if you haven’t already, and you’ll see what I’m getting at.Also, we’re hedging our bets that there’re
still goodies yet to escape from the BBC Canteen…